Quotes from Illywhacker

Peter Carey ·  569 pages

Rating: (2.4K votes)


“Charles loved her voice. It was so soft and blurred, like pastels. It made his neck tingle just to listen to her. It gave him the same delicious feeling he had as he hovered on the brink of sleep and this feeling - until now - had been the single most pleasant feeling in his life. It was the voice that coloured everything he now thought about her. It was shy and tentative and musical. Sometimes he did not manage to hear the words she said, but he did not let on about his deafness.”
― Peter Carey, quote from Illywhacker


“My name is Herbert Badgery. I am a hundred and thirty-nine years old and something of a celebrity. They come and look at me and wonder how I do it. There are weeks when I wonder the same, whole stretches of terrible time. It is hard to believe you can feel so bad and still not die.”
― Peter Carey, quote from Illywhacker


“She did not begin to tell real lies until Rosa was in hospital suffering that filthy rot that left her all eaten out inside, as light and fragile as a pine log infested with white ant”
― Peter Carey, quote from Illywhacker


“She felt his personality to be round and smooth and free from nasty spikes.”
― Peter Carey, quote from Illywhacker


“His great carved wooden head was marked with a black eye that was more yellow than black and from this spectacular bed of bruised flesh the eye itself, sand irritated, bloodshot, as wild as a currawong's, stared out at a landscape in which the tops of fences protruded from windswept sand.”
― Peter Carey, quote from Illywhacker



“The cicadas, as if they were wired on the same circuit, suddenly filled the garden with a loud burst of celebration.”
― Peter Carey, quote from Illywhacker


“It made me comfortable. It was a house where you could put your feet up and drink French champagne or Ballarat Bitter according to your mood.”
― Peter Carey, quote from Illywhacker


“Years later when she was being eccentric, had shed her corset and let her arse spread unhindered by anything but her perpetual dressing gown.”
― Peter Carey, quote from Illywhacker


“The most puzzling thing in the entire encounter occurred at a certain stage very late in the conversation, when she discovered she had been talking to a man. She had the feeling of a dream where things and people transmogrify, characters dissolve from one to the other like tricks in a film, monsters in a bottle. She had the sense, the very distinct sense, of her companion's female gender; she had been pleased to find it, had relaxed into it, had been even more delighted to find it coupled with an elegant wit and a sense of both joy and irony. The forces of life, she thought to herself, are flying high tonight.”
― Peter Carey, quote from Illywhacker


“There are problems with the wombat," Nathan Schick said. "I was interested in wombats in '29. I went up to your zoo in Sydney and looked at the wombat. The fellow said you could train them but God, Herbie, no offence... Lee-Anne... but the wombat is not star quality.”
― Peter Carey, quote from Illywhacker



About the author

Peter Carey
Born place: in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, Australia
Born date May 7, 1943
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“It's alarming how quickly people adjust to adventures when they are in one. You really have to work at being astonished by life.”
― Ellen Potter, quote from The Kneebone Boy


“Have you ever believed in something so completely that you were willing to give up everything and everyone in your life to protect it?”
― Thomas Sweeney, quote from The Harem


“Quentin finishes with the limb and sits up. “Who wears the pants in your family, man?” “That depends on the issue.”
― Greg Iles, quote from Turning Angel


“Not all princes he had read about in books of legends are beautiful and noble and carry their heads high.”
― James Purdy, quote from Narrow Rooms


“Core competence, as it is used by many managers, is a dangerously inward-looking notion. Competitiveness is far more about doing what customers value than doing what you think you’re good at. And staying competitive as the basis of competition shifts necessarily requires a willingness and ability to learn new things rather than clinging hopefully to the sources of past glory. The challenge for incumbent companies is to rebuild their ships while at sea, rather than dismantling themselves plank by plank while someone else builds a new, faster boat with what they cast overboard as detritus.”
― Clayton M. Christensen, quote from The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth


Interesting books

Rocket Boys
(13.8K)
Rocket Boys
by Homer Hickam
The Immortal Collection
(2.2K)
The Immortal Collect...
by Eva García Sáenz
Lethal Rider
(15.1K)
Lethal Rider
by Larissa Ione
Timebound
(24K)
Timebound
by Rysa Walker
Sora's Quest
(4.6K)
Sora's Quest
by T.L. Shreffler
Independence Day
(13.4K)
Independence Day
by Richard Ford

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.